Decisions on budget, superintendent loom for Easton schools

Choices made over the next several months will shape the district's future.

The Easton Area School Board is facing a host of decisions this year, including… (MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO )

January 15, 2013|By Adam Clark, Of The Morning Call

If Bob Fehnel had his way, the next few months would be easy.

Ideally, the school board Fehnel presides over would pass a balanced budget without needing painful cuts, the teachers union would agree to contractual concessions, if necessary, and an obvious choice for the new superintendent would emerge to lead the district for years to come.

But Fehnel doesn't live in an ideal world. He lives in the Easton Area School District, where deficits and layoffs have become the norm, negotiations with teachers haven't progressed and finding a superintendent has proven to be anything but easy.

As a new round of budget talks kicks off, simultaneous with a superintendent search, the decisions made between the first committee meetings Tuesday night and the end of June will go a long way toward shaping the future of the district and which school directors are around to see it.

"These are two of the largest decisions that the board gets to make," Fehnel said. "You're setting the educational direction, you're setting the direction of the tone in the district, you're setting how you're going to be progressing forward. It's extremely important."

The deadline to apply for superintendent passed on Friday, beginning the process of reviewing candidates to replace Susan McGinley, whose contract is expiring and won't be renewed. School directors hired consultants and have said they want someone with more presence in the schools and a stronger plan for raising standardized test scores.

But it's not as if previous school boards didn't conduct searches before promoting McGinley from director of support programs in 2008. The first search — and the finalists it produced — was abandoned when four new school directors took office in 2008, and the second ended when the other finalist withdrew, leaving McGinley as the last candidate standing.

This time around, it's critical that the district finds a game-changing superintendent, teachers union President Jena Brodhead said.

"We're a district right now that is in need of some direction," Brodhead said. "There's a lot of things that are going on and we need that piece that brings it all together with that shared vision."

The school board hopes to name a superintendent by April 20 and have that individual start work on July 1. That means the new schools chief will likely have little influence over the imminent budget crisis.

Easton's early budget projection released in November outlined a $6.1 million deficit that can be reduced to $4.2 million with the help of $500,000 from district savings and the maximum 2.1 percent tax increase allowed by the state. The school board could ask voters for a referendum to raise taxes even higher, but several directors have indicated they won't.

The most plausible method for balancing the budget, outside of concessions from the teachers union, is curtailing programs and staff, budget manager Mike Simonetta said in November.

That's the last thing some parents want to hear after last year, when the district cut 135 jobs, including 72 teachers, creating larger class sizes in kindergarten through eighth grade. PTA President Tara Gilligan, who previously said the district needs to acknowledge it may be doing "less with less," said the prospect of more cuts is scary and "a great concern."

The teachers union has insisted it won't reopen its contract like it did in 2011, giving up a projected $29 million in salaries, benefits and tuition reimbursement over four years. But it will talk about specific memorandums of understanding that adjust the contract. The two sides exchanged formal communication last month but have no specific proposals on the table, Brodhead said. April 16 is the first target date for adopting a proposed final budget.

A prolonged standoff could put school directors in the difficult situation of approving unpopular cuts in the backdrop of a primary election on May 21.

Five of the nine seats are up for grabs this year, and though none of the incumbents have announced whether they will run, recent history suggests they could face a swarm of challengers if they do.

After the district cut72 teaching jobs in the summer of 2010, 10 candidates ran for five open seats in the 2011 election. Of three incumbents seeking re-election, only one survived, with two others knocked out in the primary.

Six candidates, including two former school directors, sought one open seat last June when School Director Bob Arnts resigned. One of the applicants who was rejected promised that if the board didn't appoint him, he would run in the 2013 election — and win.